Old opera house in Great Bend crumbling

KSN is asking why the old opera house building in Great Bend has yet to be cleaned up. The building was condemned by the city.

GREAT BEND, Kansas – It has been five weeks since parts of the old opera house in Great Bend was left in rubble.

The back wall of the aging building collapsed back on December 18th, but Friday, the scene looks very much the same.

Lindsay Feil operated a dance studio in the building.

Now, she’s concerned what will happen to the building that had been crumbling.

“I was thinking, what am I going to do with my business, where am I going to go, is this going to be taken care of so I can stay here, or am I going to have to get all my stuff out and move. The moment I got down here and saw the sign that said the building was condemned I knew ok, I gotta get a storage shed and get out of here.”

The business owner has hired an engineer to look at the damage, but KSN wanted to know what the city is doing about the mess.

If no action is taken, the city will discuss a solution at the February city council meeting.

It is a solution that local businesses say can’t come soon enough.

“You know whether they repair it, it’s a nice old building, or they tear it down, to me I would rather it happen quickly,” said Dr. Jesse Grove, Grove Chiropractic Owner.

Area business owners say the building has been in bad shape for quite a while, and it didn’t surprise them when the back wall partially collapsed in December.

“It’s been an ongoing issue, and now all of a sudden the bricks and stuff are down, but I would get after the girls for parking over there cause you knew this was gonna happen at some point,” said Dr. Grove.

As for Lindsay, she says it may just be the push she needed to build a new location for her business.

“It was always the plan, it was always exactly what I was going to do, it just made me do it a little sooner.”

KSN will keep you updated on what the city decides to do with the old opera house.